Rio+20: The future is already here

Rio de Janeiro: It’s rarely that one sees history unfolding before their eyes. And history does change rarely. It often repeats itself, sometimes as tragedy and sometimes as farce. We are at a conference, which will make make history – either by success or by failure. At Rio+20, the UN summit on sustainable development which opened here on Wednesday, there is now a draft in place – a document which will be adopted by more than 120 world leaders as a blueprint for future policies on growth.

I have been here since June 16 and in the past five days so much has happened and I have heard so many words and seen so many statements that it leaves no doubt in my minds that the whole world, barring some exceptions, is paying a lot attention to this meeting.

Let’s see what is at stake here? The Rio+20 document will become a framework for all policies about growth, poverty, equity and climate. It’s not a binding treaty, but it will have a major impact on how people live, grow their food, what cars they drive, what kind of things they eat, what types of houses they live and where they live. It’s been sometime that the world realized that our growth leads to pollution which leads to global warming which leads to climate change and that leads to changes in agriculture and weather patterns which can lead to freaky weather and send the food availability and food prices out of control.

An agreement between all 190 nations, which are member of the United Nations, on green economy and sustainable development goals would mean that the whole world is going to adopt new technologies and new models of development, which may change the way they have been growing so far. And that’s the reason this meeting became contentious, with US and EU on one side and the group of developing nations, known as G-77+China, on the other side. So strong was the difference of opinion between the two groups that each and every terms such as “poverty”, “green”, “sustainable”, “water”, “ocean” and even “food” were discussed and debated again and again before the draft was finalized.

In the end, after long rounds of talks and negotiations, it was the view of the developing nations that prevailed. Credit must be given to the team of Brazilian diplomats, led by Ambassador Figueiredo, handled the situation so well that matters never went out of hand. Though naysayers and cynics have been saying that Rio+20 would be another Copenhagen (where the world failed to reach an agreement on climate change), there was no agreement to be signed here, only adoption of a declaration. And the draft of that declaration was out on Tuesday. It was delayed by a few hours but it was in place.

Now, this draft proves one thing very clearly that the balance of global power is indeed shifting, if it has not shifted already. The way the BRICS nations – Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa – stood by each other and pushed their common agenda, it was clear who was calling the shots. The Americans, Canadians and Europeans just kept trying pushing their agenda, which actually translates into new trade barriers and denial of technology to developing nation, but in the end they failed to prevail.

At Rio+20, if there was a conflict it was between the rich nations, which want to revive their sinking economies by selling new green economy stuff to the developing countries, and the emerging powers like Brazil, India and China, which want to keep their growth rate up so that they can tackle poverty and equity issues in a better way.

With leaders like President Obama and Prime Minister Cameron deciding to sulk by skipping the meet, the stars of this conference are President Dilma Rousseff of Brazil and Prime Ministers Manmohan Singh of and Wen Jiabao of China. Even if Obama was here, he would have made no difference as the US president wouldn’t have contributed to the debate in a positive way.

In the end it was nice to see India siding with G-77 countries, something we have not seen in a long time.

There couldn’t be better place than Rio for this historical change.

DISCLAIMER : Views expressed above are the author's own.

Author

Shobhan Saxena is a Sao Paulo-based journalist. An editor with Sunday Times of India before moving to Brazil, he now reports on politics, trade, culture, music and, of course, football. Though Shobhan's interests range from international issues, human rights and politics to art & culture, what really fascinates him is the extraordinary lives of ordinary people - the men and women on the street, their lives and their views on everything under the sun. Here, he tries to capture small slices of those colourful lives in Brazil and other South American countries.
Shobhan Saxena tweets
@shobhansaxena
You can also see his news feeds at
www.facebook.com/shobhan.saxena

Shobhan Saxena is a Sao Paulo-based journalist. An editor with Sunday Times of India before moving to Brazil, he now reports on politics, trade, culture, mu. . .

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Author

Shobhan Saxena is a Sao Paulo-based journalist. An editor with Sunday Times of India before moving to Brazil, he now reports on politics, trade, culture, music and, of course, football. Though Shobhan's interests range from international issues, human rights and politics to art & culture, what really fascinates him is the extraordinary lives of ordinary people - the men and women on the street, their lives and their views on everything under the sun. Here, he tries to capture small slices of those colourful lives in Brazil and other South American countries.
Shobhan Saxena tweets
@shobhansaxena
You can also see his news feeds at
www.facebook.com/shobhan.saxena

Shobhan Saxena is a Sao Paulo-based journalist. An editor with Sunday Times of India before moving to Brazil, he now reports on politics, trade, culture, mu. . .